Elizabeth Saddington (1828 - 1863): Trying to tie up loose ends

This post relates to Elizabeth Saddington, eldest child of my 3x great grandparents, Thomas Saddington and Hannah Deacon, and demonstrates how incomplete information can lead to wrong conclusions. The research involved in this post has taken place over a twenty year period.

Elizabeth Saddington, daughter of Thomas and Hannah, was born in December 1828 in Great Bowden, Leicestershire, and was baptised on 29 December 1828 in the Parish Church.

Her life is then conjecture until the 1841 census, due to the lack of official documentation. In 1841, Elizabeth, now aged 13, was living in Great Bowden with her parents, Thomas and Hannah, and six of her siblings, namely Thomas (1830), John Jonathan (1831), William (1834), Joseph (1836), Ann (1838) and Jonathan (1841).

Over the next ten years, Elizabeth appears to have remained at home, helping out with the housework and the younger children. In the 1851 census, she was still living in Great Bowden, aged 22, with her now widowed father and seven siblings, being the six present in 1841 and a further brother, Henry (1843). Elizabeth's occupation is given as 'housekeeper'; her mother, Hannah, having died only about six weeks before.

When the 1861 census was taken, Elizabeth, aged 32, was still living at home at Middle Green, Great Bowden with her father and her three youngest brothers, Joseph, Jonathan and Henry. However, her occupation is now given as 'charwoman', so she was presumably working outside the home, cleaning other people's houses. Her father had not remarried, so it is reasonably safe to assume that she was also still keeping house for him and her brothers.

After that, I could find no record of her in the 1871 and 1881 censuses, so at that stage in my research I presumed that she had probably moved away and possibly got married. Elizabeth is a fairly common name amongst Saddingtons at the time, so tracing her marriage would not be easy, and so I let it ride.

Research later showed that, at the time of the 1871 census, her father, Thomas Saddington, was living alone at Lucas Yard, Great Bowden; all of his children had seemingly left home. And in 1881, he was living in Foxton with his next youngest and unmarried brother, John, and their youngest and spinster sister, Sarah. But when Thomas died on 28 May 1883, he was back in Great Bowden and his death was registered by "E. Saddington, Daughter, Present at the death, Great Bowden". When I bought his death certificate back in 1998, I assumed that this meant that his daughter, Elizabeth, had not married after all and had come back from wherever she had been for the 1871 and 1881 censuses to care for her father in his final illness.

Recently, however, I went back through the notes that I had originally taken from the Great Bowden parish registers. There, amongst the burials, I found an entry for an Elizabeth Saddington, aged 34, being buried on 26 February 1863. I did the maths and the dates were right for Elizabeth Saddington born in 1828. So I bought the certificate to make sure one way or the other.

When the certificate arrived, it stated that Elizabeth Saddington, aged 34 and a charwoman, had died on 22 February 1863 of chlorosis and exhaustion. The death was registered by one Sarah West, present at the death. Further research was called for. Going back to the 1861 census, I found a Sarah West, wife of Samuel, living two doors away from the Saddington family. I can now be almost 100% certain that the Elizabeth Saddington on the death certificate is the same as Elizabeth Saddington, daughter of Thomas and Hannah Saddington. The only other Elizabeth Saddington of a similar age known to be living in Great Bowden in 1863 was the wife of Thomas Saddington, Elizabeth's oldest brother, but she is known to have lived until 1914 and is buried with her husband in the Great Bowden cemetery.

This means that the conclusion I reached in 1998 regarding which Elizabeth Saddington had registered Thomas Saddington the elder's death was completely wrong. It had been his daughter in law, Elizabeth Saddington (nee Smith), not his own daughter, Elizabeth. I had been misled by the custom of referring to sons and daughters in law as sons and daughters, something which happens frequently in historical documents.

To tie up the final loose end, I investigated the cause of Elizabeth's death. According to Wikipedia, chlorosis is a form of anaemia (iron deficiency), one of the symptoms of which is lack of energy - which probably led to exhaustion being given as a secondary cause of Elizabeth's death. It may have been hereditary, and today it would have been treated with vitamin supplements. In Elizabeth's day, it was also known as green sickness, because a sufferer's skin developed a pale green tinge. An academic article about chlorosis can be found here.

So Elizabeth Saddington died relatively young and unmarried, having spent most of her life looking after her family. The possibility of her cause of death being hereditary has now made me look more closely at her mother, Hannah, who died at the age of 42.

Any comments on this post will be gratefully received.

Wanted! - Descendants of Thomas and Elizabeth (nee Smith) Saddington of Great Bowden, LEI

This post is a continuation from my post of 24 December 2007 in which I listed the descendants of my great grandparents, John Jonathan and Jane (nee Hewlett) Saddington in the hope of locating previously unknown members of the family. As a result of that post, I am now in contact with 2 new cousins.

Today's post relates to the descendants of John Jonathan's eldest brother, Thomas, and his wife, Elizabeth(nee Smith). Thomas was born in Great Bowden, Leicestershire in 1830, and was baptised in the Parish Church on 13 September that year. He followed his father's trade of blacksmith all his life.

On 31 August 1854, he married Elizabeth Smith, daughter of John Smith, a labourer, at the Parish Church in Great Bowden. According to the parish records, they had 10 children.

Their eldest daughter, Mary Rosina, was baptised on 25 December 1854 at Great Bowden. Mary Rosina married Benjamin Croshaw, an engine driver, on 18 April 1878 at Great Bowden. The couple went on to have six children, Thomas Saddington (1879), Joseph Benjamin (1880), Constance Daisy (1882), Clara Mabel (1885), Horace Albert Victor (1887) and Nelly Rosina (1893) - most of whom were born in Netherfield, Notts.

Thomas and Elizabeth's second child was a son, John Charles, born in 1856 at Great Bowden. He married Mary Christiana Jane Howitt in the June quarter of 1880 in the Barton Regis Registration District. John and Mary had nine, possibly ten, children - Charles John (1881), Thomas William (1883), Frederick (1886), Constance May (1888), Lilian Mary (1890), George (1893), John Leonard (1894), Harry (1897), Nellie Elizabeth (1900) and possibly Arthur, for whom I have no dates.

Child number 3 was Thomas, born in 1858 at Great Bowden. He married Elizabeth Coe on 25 December 1880 at Great Bowden. I can find no record of this couple after the 1881 census, but believe that they may have emigrated to the USA.

The fourth child was Joseph, born in Great Bowden in 1861. He married Sarah Susan Peake at Foxton Parish Church on 16 October 1884. This couple only had three children: Thomas (1885), Elizabeth (1887) and John (1890).

Child number 5 was Elizabeth, born in 1863 at Great Bowden. She married George William Marshall, a brakesman, on 25 December 1883 at Great Bowden, and moved with him to Netherfield, Notts, where they had four known children - George (1885), William (1886), Percival (1888) and Elizabeth (1893).

The sixth child was Sarah, born in 1866 at Great Bowden. Sarah married John Henry Bassett, a fireman on the railway, on 2 September 1889 at Great Bowden, and also moved to Netherfield, Notts, where they had three known children - Constance Lilian (1890), John Henry (1894) and Ivy Irene (1896).

Child number 7 was Florence, born in 1868 at Great Bowden. She married Frederick Fortnum, a butcher, on 26 December 1887 at Great Bowden. Florence and Frederick went on to have nine children, most of whom were born in Market Harborough. The children were Frederick Ernest (1888), William Henry (1890), Florence Maud (1892), Herbert Leonard (1894), Nellie (1897), Archie (1900), Emily (1902), Elizabeth Constance (1908) and Thomas Sidney (1910).

Thomas and Elizabeth's eighth and ninth children were Emily Ann (1870) and Ellen (1872), both in Great Bowden. Neither Emily nor Ellen ever married, and they are buried together in the Great Bowden Cemetery, not far from their parents.

Child number 10 was Constance, born in Great Bowden in 1874. Constance married Arthur Richards, a joiner, on 29 October 1896 at Great Bowden, and then moved to Carlton, Notts, where the couple had two known children - Herbert Arthur (1898) and George (1900).

Thomas Saddington died on 8 May 1901, and was buried on 13 May 1901 in the Great Bowden Cemetery, just down the road from the Parish Church. His wife, Elizabeth, died on 21 May 1914, and was buried with him on 25 May 1914.

If you are descended from any of these people, I would be delighted to hear from you.

DNA Project Update - March 2008

Well, the results are in!

The Saddington DNA Project now consists of a 12 marker Y-DNA result for the Appleby Magna Saddingtons and a 37 marker Y-DNA result for the Foxton/Great Bowden Saddingtons.

Of course, at the moment, it is only possible to compare the first 12 markers for these two tests, and these are as follows:

Appleby Magna 13 24 14 11 11 14 12 12 12 13 13 30
Foxton/Great Bowden 13 24 14 12 11 15 12 12 12 13 13 30

Taking the Appleby Magna results as the base, you can see that two of the Foxton/Great Bowden markers are one number different from their Appleby Magna equivalents. This is technically known as having a genetic distance of 2 between the two people tested.

A genetic distance of 2 generally means that the probability of those two people being related is not high. The fact that research into the paper records shows that the two Saddingtons that have been tested so far are definitely not related in the male line at any point during the last 9 generations makes the probability even lower. In fact, based on these 12 markers, the probability that these two men share a common ancestor in the last 33 generations is only 52.79%.

However, all is not lost, my friends.

Increasing the number of markers tested could also increase the probability of a common ancestor. Testing other members of these two branches of the Saddington family could also increase the probability. This is because different DNA markers mutate at different rates, and so mutations in different markers change the probabilities of sharing a common ancestor.

What must also be taken into account is that Saddington is what is known as a locative surname, i.e. it is a surname adopted from a placename, in this case, the village of Saddington in Leicestershire. Locative surnames only tend to occur when the original person moves away from the place whose name they later adopt. For example, if a man named John moved away from Saddington to a nearby village, where there was already at least one other man named John, it would be likely that his new neighbours would refer to him as John from Saddington. In time, this could become John Saddington, and the new surname might then be passed on to his children and to their children.

So, with a locative surname like Saddington, DNA testing can show one or both of two options. Either that all branches of the family come from a single common ancestor, or that each branch comes from a different ancestor, or that some branches share a common ancestor and others don't.

This means that all is still to play for - we just need more male Saddingtons willing to be tested! Ladies, although this is not something that we can do ourselves, we can encourage the Saddington men in our lives to have a test done!

As usual, any comments or queries gratefully received.

Leicester Registration District Marriages 1837-1871

Again courtesy of Jenny Reeve, this time via her Leicester Registration District Marriage Challenge, I have copy certificates for 14 Saddington marriages, as follows:

30 April 1840 - Joseph Brown, son of William Brown, married Ann Saddington, daughter of Joseph Saddington, at St Margaret, Leicester

29 June 1840 - John Saddington, son of Thomas Saddington, married Mary Goodwin, daughter of Francis Hardy, at St Margaret, Leicester

27 March 1842 - Joseph Saddington, son of John Saddington, married Susanna Richards, daughter of William Richards, at St Margaret, Leicester

31 August 1846 - Joseph Saddington, son of Joseph Saddington, married Maria Snaithe, daughter of Thomas Snaithe, at St Margaret, Leicester

22 November 1846 - William Frost, son of John Frost, married Mary Saddington, daughter of John Saddington, at St Margaret, Leicester

22 April 1848 - Daniel Saddington, son of Joseph Saddington, married Frances Ann Siddons, daughter of William Siddons, at St Nicholas, Leicester

28 February 1849 - William Saddington, son of John Saddington, married Mary Ann Herbert, daughter of Thomas Herbert, at St Margaret, Leicester

15 September 1849 - John Hurdborough, son of John Hurdborough, married Elizabeth Saddington, daughter of Thomas Saddington, at St Margaret, Leicester

24 November 1855 - Thomas Moore, son of Thomas Moore, married Hannah Elizabeth Saddington, daughter of John Saddington, at St Mary de Castro, Leicester

23 November 1856 - Thomas Saddington, son of John Saddington, married Maria Matts, daughter of William Matts, at St John the Devine, Leicester

8 November 1857 - William Saddington, son of Thomas Saddington, married Ann Shipley, daughter of Joseph Shipley, at St Margaret, Leicester

28 March 1863 - James Wright, son of Thomas Wright, married Leah Saddington, daughter of John Saddington, at St Margaret, Leicester

8 September 1864 - William Page, son of Isaac Page, married Elizabeth Ann Saddington, daughter of Joseph Saddington, at St Margaret, Leicester

31 October 1870 - Joseph Taylor, son of Henry Taylor, married Ann Saddington, daughter of Joseph Saddington, at St Margaret, Leicester

Points to note - 1840 John and his bride were both widowed, 1842 Joseph and his bride were both minors, 1848 Daniel came from Kings Cliffe, Northamptonshire, and 1863 Leah and her groom were both minors, as were 1864 Elizabeth Ann and her groom.

For anyone with Saddington ancestry in Great Bowden, Leics, 1857 William was the third son of Thomas Saddington (1800-1883)and Hannah Deacon (1809?-1851) of Great Bowden. William and his wife later moved down to London. In addition, 1870 Ann's father, Joseph, was the youngest brother of Thomas Saddington (1800-1883). 1846 Joseph was also from Great Bowden. His parents were Joseph (1788?-1819) and Hannah (1791?-1866) Saddington.

If anyone has an interest in any of these marriages, please let me know.